A film producer sued Netflix for $105 million on Wednesday after the company lost an unencrypted copy of his World War II film “Fortitude,” starring Nicolas Cage and Ben Kingsley.
Simon Afram, a Swiss businessman, wrote the script and spent seven years and $45 million bringing it to the screen, according to his lawsuit. The complaint states that an associate producer dropped off a digital cinema package at Netflix headquarters in June so that the company could consider whether to buy the rights.
But when the associate producer tried to retrieve the film, Netflix became unresponsive, according to the complaint. More than a week later, after repeated efforts to arrange a pickup, Netflix acknowledged via email that the film had been stolen.
“This is a first for us,” wrote Sean Berney, director of original film at Netflix. “Unfortunately, someone stole a good amount of drives from our office desks this past week. We’ve been working through this with our security teams to no luck.”
“Fortitude” has had a troubled history. In 2023, Afram sued director Martin Scorsese, accusing him of pocketing $500,000 to serve as an executive producer and then doing nothing to help get the project off the ground. Scorsese’s lawyers countersued, argued that Afram was a newcomer to the industry with unrealistic expectations. The parties settled out of court the following year.
